Legendary Artist Chris Marker Admires Second Life Machinima, Contemplates Metaverse Transcendance

Waiting for Monsieur Marker on his Second Life home near a jetty

Chris Marker, the extremely exclusive French artist who created the masterpiece short film La Jetée (it was the basis for Terry Gilliam's great movie 12 Monkeys), is an occasional Second Life Resident experimenting with SL as a new artistic medium, and even has a home made for him by MosMax Hax. (Direct SLurl teleport at this link.) Bettina Tizzy first noted this last year, but up until recently, I didn't know his avatar name. On some occasions at least, as I discovered last month, it's Sergei Murasaki: that's the Second Life name he took during a May in-world appearance for the Harvard Film Archive, where some of his movies were screened. I missed it, but fortunately someone was there to publish the chat transcript. Now nearly 90 years old, here's Monsieur Marker on Second Life machinima, and his project for metaverse transcendance (with typos amended):

Pixels Sideways: Have you considered exploring filmmaking in VR aka "machinima"?

Sergei Murasaki (Marker): I have already lots of rushes on my trips in SL what I need is again an extra life to work on ’em. BUT I have seen a few SL movies -- quite stimulating...

Mariko Woodford: Everyone is curious to know how much time you spend in SL?

Sergei Murasaki: Not much, unfortunately. Too much to do in this other side of the world called reality. I’m looking for new ways to use the avatars. Imagine that we manage to program them with all our memories and that once they may go by themselves, even when we’re not here.

Any AI programmers reading this interested in helping with that last project? IM Sergei Murasaki. I have several times, but no reply so far. Anway, read the rest of the conversation here, and this nice write-up, "Web Cinema: Alone together with Chris Marker in Second Life", with many Marker resources (including the transcript.)